totmannschalter

A simple Rust-based service that monitors multiple http(s) endpoints with different intervals and notifies administrators if the service goes down. Another notification is sent once it is back up again. Totmannschalter is German for dead man's switch – a contraption which is meant to halt operations or send a notice in the absence of a certain signal. In trains it is a switch that needs to be tapped periodically to make sure person operating the train is still awake and conscious.

Features

• per-endpoint configuration for values like interval and contact email
• toml based configuration
• sends you the error message and if the service is back up, information on how long it has been down

Installation

Using Rust cargo

1. Make sure you have Rust installed
2. Run cargo install totmannschalter

You should now be able to run totmannschalter directly from the CLI. If you want to run it as a system service (e.g. on system startup) you have to either create something yourself (if you are not on a OS that uses systemd) or install the totmannschalter.service file present in the repository like this:

# Run as root so the config will be created in the right place
sudo totmannschalter

# Setup the config (your path could be different!)
sudo vim /etc/totmannschalter/config.toml

# Download the service file
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/atoav/totmannschalter/master/totmannschalter.service

# Find out where your totmannschalter is installed
which totmannschalter

# Use the output from the which command above and replace the path 
# right of ExecStar in the systemd unit file:
vim totmannschalter.service

# Copy the unit file to your services
sudo cp totmannschalter.services /etc/systemd/system/

# Enable the service (so it runs automatically after the next system startup)
sudo systemctl enable totmannschalter

# Start the service (so it starts right away)
sudo systemctl start totmannschalter

# Check what is going on
journalctl -fu totmannschalter

Using Debian package (.deb)

Build the package yourself

1. Make sure you have cargo installed
2. Install cargo-deb using cargo install cargo-deb
3. Run cargo deb in the root of the repository
4. Go to target/debian/
5. Install the package using sudo dpkg -i totmanschalter<TAB>
6. Make sure to run sudo totmannschalter at least once before enabling the service, so a default config file can be created. Alternatively you could also run totmannschalter as a regular user service without root then you would have to create your own user service file and skip the rest of the steps
7. Enable the service: sudo systemctl enable totmannschalter
8. Start the service sudo systemctl start totmannschalter
9. Check the status of the service: systemctl status totmannschalter or journalctl -fu totmannschalter

Use a release build

See the github releases page : )